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Unread 01-15-2004, 07:25 PM   #31
pHaestus
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I dunno airspirit I kinda equate migrating a larger business environment over to *NIX as being similar to buying AMD-based servers. Sure you can do it, but if something goes awry (and no matter what the platform something will) then it's all because of your decision to go with something unproven (in the eyes of management) and it's your ass. I also think you are trivializing the cost of migration in the form of answering millions of tech support questions every day (how do I burn a cd?) The average business user doesn't want to have to hack text files (xfree86?) any time they change from a larger high res monitor to a smaller LCD and forget to change the res beforehand. I would classify myself as pretty typical of a business power user: I need workstation-class PCs at work and know Win32 pretty well. I am a Linux newbie though with one Mandrake 9.1 box for running code that doesn't work on win32 (and would involve buying programming suites rather than just gcc). I run into TONS of "how do I do this?" questions when using the Linux box on a daily basis, and every one of those questions results in searching the web, installing new packages, and sometimes recompiling. In my life, time is my most valuable asset. The loss of productivity as your whole operation's end users relearn how to use their PCs is IMO never going to make the switch worthwhile. At least for Mandrake 9.1, it's NOT intuitive for Windows users and so what I do now is just remotely connect to the linux box when I need to run any code and don't mess with it.
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